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The fact that there's actually more basis for American English and British English to be considered different languages than there is for Croatian and Bosnian is WILD (the former is actually more divergent than the latter)

"Research and discuss with your partner" ass ending 😭

I don't really understand why Swiss German is considered to be a dialect and Yiddish for example is considered to be a language. I think it has more to do with the fact that Swiss German was never really written down that much and Swiss people always learn to read and write standard German instead whereas Yiddish was passed on in the Hebrew script which made it more secluded. Anyway that's just my theory, but I can say that as a German speaker Swiss is NOT necessarily easier easier to understand than Yiddish....

so many wrong in this video. we Chinese call those languages 方言 which means 地方语言（local language）, not dielect. dielect is a wrong translation. our people and government never said other 方言 is not language.

I went to class with a Bosnian guy for some time. He once spoke in his native language from Bosnia, so I asked him what it was. He simply called the language "Yougoslavian", so apparently there are some people who don't care as much, at least among people I've met who don't live in the region.

Im a croat, and i agree 🙋‍♂️

Bro, I came here fully confident I’ll see Arabic and you just barely said its name! We need a second video

Ukrainian and Belarusian share 95% of vocabulary but the pronunciation is so different they aren't fully mutually intelligible 😂

This topic hits home. I have family that speaks Urdu, and insists that it’s not Hindi, when really, it damn well is. Spoken forms are nearly identical. On an other note, I studied Arabic and discovered that the reason it’s so damn hard, is because it’s not spoken by anyone, and each spoken dialect is so different from it and each other it’s hardly the same language. It was codified out of Quranic Arabic. This is exactly like pretending that Castilian, Catalan, Tuscan, Sicilian and Romanian are all Latin. Study it, then try to speak Spanish. You can’t. You have to learn a whole different spoken language. The “language vs dialect” dispute is entirely political, and born out of nationalism that really only started to come about in its modern form around 100 to 150 years ago.

FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT! This is one of my biggest frustrations. People call languages dialects either for selfish political reasons or just out of convenience. This is so ignorant! When people tell me “I’m trying to learn Chinese,” I instantly look at them and I sometimes can’t refrain from asking “Which kind of «Chinese» are we talking about, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Gan?” And they just stare at me like I had just summoned a demon. Plus when I hear ill informed people say stuff like “the Indian language.” This makes my blood boil.

What a cliffhanger

Sicilian and Napolitan somewhat mutually intelligible ?? Since when ;_; Maybe not to me... except sometimes in music :)

Philippines has a very similar situation with China but with the Filipino language. It is literally just the Manila dialect of Tagalog, one out of 11 widely spoken PH languages, and out of 130 total PH languages in the country. Filipino and English both act as lingua franca, and in some places you may find people who know more English than Filipino.

The modern Sinitic languages have not developed separately from Proto-Sinitic. The ancient Chinese dialects did, but the modern languages have all developed from what is known as middle Chinese. In fact, none of the dialectal diversity of the language we call ancient Chinese lives on. The only form that has had linguistic descendants is the one that gave us middle Chinese, and that is the one all modern sinitic languages have come from.

Well, as a person from Taiwan, I can say that the map at 0:15 is largely wrong about the situation in Taiwan. We speak Mandarin in everyday life, only an extremely small group of the people refuse to speak Mandarin to communicate with others. And funnily enough, the same group of people will also be very offended by the fact that the map implies "Taiwanese" (mostly Hokkien) has anything to do with China.

As a native speaker of Cantonese, I thank you so much for highlighting the importance of calling those Sinitic languages. Unfortunately, due to political reason, in particular the authoritarian dictatorship of Mainland China, many Mainland Chinese people who have been brainwashed by the communist regime for over 7 decades, believe that all those Sinitic languages are inferior to Mandarin Chinese and they look down on them as mere dialects. Politics should have nothing to do with linguistic science. But, of course, in Mainland China, politics is everything. They even rewrite history, archaeology, anthropology, and even geography.

NO I AGREE WITH THE FIRST HOTTAKE I AGREE SM IM FUCKING SICK OF SAYING DO U SPEAK CHINESE - NO BITCH I DONT KNOW WHICH UR TALKING ABT YES I SPEAK CANTONESE BUT NOT MANDARIN. also i cant understand mandarin since its COMPLETELY DIFFERENT (mandarin = 4 tones, cantonese = 6 tones) the only sad thing is that smaller chinese languages (im learning canto), is that they don't have many learning resources (im thinking of Hakka).

0:03 This is not a hot take. Everyone with a modicum of knowledge knows that Arabic and Chinese are not languages, but actually language groups.

For the last one: As a German who speaks both Norwegian and German I can tell you the languages are pretty similar. Learning Norwegian was quite easy as you can guess a words meaning with like 60% accuracy at the start and when you know more about the language it will get easier.

for anyone wondering what modi and arif alvi are saying to each other at 6:30 modi says "go to hell!" and he responds "YOU go to hell!"

Yeah the truth is the difference between language and dialect is mostly political

Balkaners when they pronounce 2 syllables in the word Water differently: 🔫🔫🔫🔫💣💣💣💣💣🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

I'm a hongkonger, I found Vietnamese and Japanese more intellectual than Mandarin if I didn't learn Mandarin in school

More about hindi and urdu: Their classification as different languages is not purely politcal,in spoken they are almost the same but more formal urdu sounds like alot like persian and bit like arabic and has alot of prepositions taken from Persian and more formal hindi sounds alot like sanskrit diverging into seperate langauges Urdu has alot of sounds not present in hindi, z/ز , f/ف ,kh/خ(unvoiced) ,gh/غ(voiced like french R), zh/ژ(like french "j") q/ق(k but from back of the throat) Hindi adds a dot to pre existing letter to represent these sounds ,i have seen it for learning videos hindi to urdu Urdu's identity is deeply invested in Islam,alot of words might have came directly from Quran, whereas hindi's identity is deeply invested in hinduism. moreover alot speakers speak slang hindustani which is highly influenced by english, they will say things like "Swim karo(swim)" at this point this is not even hindi or urdu but a variant of hindustani influenced by english. As a Urdu speaker I was not able to understand some or alot of hindi sentences because the speaker used proper Hindi not english influenced Hindustani. Moreover as a urdu speaker i learned persian within 1 years but only because i took 3 months break otherwise 8 months,farsi has alot of words shared with urdu so i dont even change 80-90% of the words when switching between them. so in conclusion,yes in spoken almost the same language but not in formal. I recognise them as same in almost spoken but as someone that learned persian and has heard formal hindi i recognise them as seperate in formal.

From my amateurish learning of Sinitic/Chinese languages being called dialects, I think this is just how common people perceived them as Chinese linguist also recognized them as separate languages within sinitic family. But it didn't helped that within these languages there are dialects that unintelligible to the prestige dialect speaker (like how both Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong speaks Mandarin but with their thick local accent that makes them almost unintelligible for modern speaker). Since China is continuous and the border between these (unintelligible) dialects often blur with the language border itself, the dialect misnomer stuck within the common consciousness.

349º

I love the way Arabs across countries insist they are speaking variations of the same language even though they can't understand each other whereas Croats and Serbs who understand each other perfectly insist they are speaking separate languages. Even though the Croat from Zagreb can understand the Serb from Belgrade more easily than he can understand some of his fellow Croats speaking "Croatian" dialects. The encouraging thing though is that although you do occasionally come across the odd nationalist online mostly younger people from the ex-Yugoslav countries are more chill about this point and are happy to admit they are more dialects than languages. As a native speaker of English when I first started learning Serbo-Croat or BCS as it's often called now I realised quickly that the differences between the two languages were not as big as the differences between various forms of English and Spanish or even French if you include Québec French. However, speakers of these dialects have no problem referring to them as English, Spanish or French because it's a recognition of where the language originated. With Serbo-Croat you can't pinpoint the name of a country and/or people where the language first developed so each nation as they went their own way just called it 'our' language and named it after themselves.

A little text that might fit as a very slight expansion on this based on what i learned and am learning at uni as part of my degree: A language is a continuum of all dialects that border each other yet are understandable to both speakers, which doesn't mean every dialect is going to be directly intelligable through the standardised language. That [standardised/codified] language resembles a roof above the dialects underneath. The underneath does not refer to these languages being worth less, it merely describes that the dialect is not standardised and perhaps more localised than the codification created based on the dialect in question or a however distantly related dialect. The words dialect and language also are very difficult to define in an exact manner since bith themselves are also colloquially used terms. For example the east slavic languages count as a dialect continuum but the languages making up the roof of those constructions are russian, ukrainian and belorussian. If in theory only one of those codified standards existed, all of the dialects in that continuum count as dialects of the existing codified standard. That means that depending on who you ask, the amount of languages in a group may differ depending on who you're talking to as the answer may be based on among other things the amount of codified standards there are inside that group of languages. For example - and i keep using slavic languages as a reference as my degree focuses on them and i therefore feel more confident talking about those - the dialect continuum of what some might refer to as serbo-croatian encompasses štokavian dialects [there are also two other dialect groups in croatia, čakavian and kajkavian] between the coast of croatia [without istria and the region northwest of Zagreb which represent these other dialect groups] through slavonia and the vojvodina as well as through bosnia, montenegro, a bit of kosovo and serbia. On this territory you have one continuum of dialects with a total of four standards [since 2006-2007], yet these languages are mutually intelligable with each other and at my university you actually study them as 'one' language course [BCMS]. I would also like to say the picture at 4:36 of serbo-croatian was ill-fitting as Macedonian and Slovene are both outside that dialect group with slovene being closer related to the kajkavian dialect group and makedonian being more similar to bulgarian, you had better maps after that point. Also all four of these languages have both a latin and cyrillic script, there are also the ijekavic and ekavic standard in that dialect continuum, the former includes croatian and bosniany the latter serbian, i do not know off the top of my head which one montenegrin is part of. The important thing is that we remember dialects are not 'non-languages', they are themselves languages, and mainly differ on where they are used in life, be it at home vs in public or government or on the internet. There is a lot of nuance to the VERY foggy difference between language and dialect. [i am probably going to edit this comment over time, just a heads up, because there is probably a fair share of typos in this which i hope don't fully deduct from the value of what i'm saying. please excuse my yapping thank you.]

One Italian language is the closest to Latin. It is Sardinian (more specifically, Nuorese Sardinian), curiously.

Yue = Cantonese, in Mandarin it's usually referred to as yue yu, the second part meaning language, while hua (speech, tongue, dialect) is used to refer to most other varieties, including "Mandarin", which is called Standard Speech. Also, the picture in 1:31 shows an ethnic minority whose native language isn't (closely) related to Chinese at all.

that's basically europe for you they are still considered dialects though, Serbia has both writing systems by the way ! Bulgarian and Macedonian is a similar history... Arabic dialects aren't mutually intelligible though germanic languages are very similar if the same brach is addressed then set have their own micro languages and dialects and those are culturally diffrent... Portuguese is brought to brazil and not culturally developed on brazil you cannot make those comparisons... slavic languages are grammatically different but often have almost no problem to understand each other.. anyhow You got a sub..

Languages that are considered dialects: *every filipino language according to filipinos*

You can also find a similar situation in the Malay language. In Malaysia, the Malay language is known as "Bahasa Malaysia", with more of modern English loanwords whereas in Indonesia, the language is known as "Bahasa Indonesia" (with more of Dutch loanwords). But both of these languages are actually "Bahasa Melayu". The separation in this language is due to political influence.

You skirted around this but it's often political in nature if it is a 'language' or a 'dialect'. From North America here are two examples: Inuktut (Inuit language collective term) is a dialect continuum of languages with many dialects getting their own language name. So is Nehiyawewin (Cree-Y dialect spelling) a dialect continuum without different dialects getting their own name. The Ryukyuan languages of Japan are considered dialects of Japanese and are another case of the languages dying out. There are a lot of other ones around the world. One last language example to consider: Low German (means so many different things) and High German. Or how German and Dutch dialects near their borders are more mutually intelligible to each other than they are to the standard of their respective language.

I'm English and yet I can still follow the quaint language of this North American!

im a native urdu speaker and yeah thats pretty much the case a native hindi speaker probably cant understand urdu literature and vice versa but in normal everyday conversation we have 0 problems especially these days considering that theres a major influence of english which further bridges the gap

Another example similar to the Hindustani one is Bahasa Melayu (Malaysia) and Bahasa Indonesia. Both are derived from the Johor-Riau Melayu which was a common trade language in the region. Really the reason why they are considered as 2 separate language is because of political reasons (Indonesians revere Bahasa Indonesia as a part of their national identity). Unlike Hindi and Urdu where the standard form is different and the vernacular form is similar, it is the other way around for Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu.

In the Arab world, almost every country has a different dialect, but they are close, but the countries of the Maghreb have very complex dialects that we do not understand. You may think that they are different languages ​​if you compare them to the rest of the Arabic dialects, but they still fall within the Arabic dialects.

just to be clear its not like gulf arab can't understand Moroccan its more that they so far away that so rare to hear each other and get used to the accent and also slang extra vocab but also that these mfs refuse to just speak arab they mixed with other languages like french bebeir etc.. if both spoke standard arabic they both gonna understand

it's "Standard Chinese" or "Standard Han Speech", "Mandarin" is a superficial word which relates to the non-vernacular language of the imperial bureaucrats

Hindi and urdu are literally the same language but considered different language whereas languages that are completely different from hindi is considered dialect

Thanks for pointing this out. I’m Otomi from central Mexico. The early Spanish colonial period was when my language was still one dialectal continuum. The 300,000 speakers we have today, can actually be split into multiple language groups with low intelligibility between each other.some linguists have declared them all variants, but they themselves cannot understand early Otomi colonial texts. The Otomi language of precortesian times of 1518 has become to these modern variants, what Classical Latin is to the Romance languages .

1:12 i wonder if they only look like completely different languages because they use different phrases. Like i could say “what is your name” but i could use a couple of different words and it would look different but still have the same meaning, like “what do you call yourself?” Or “how may i address you?”

The difference in scripts between the Hindi and Urdu languages occurred due to Islamic rulers who ruled in India, which caused the people (mainly soldiers) speaking different languages to try and communicate with each other, leading to a same language which was spoken, but due to each community not knowing the other script, they wrote in their own scripts, causing the nearly-same language to be written in two scripts, Arabic and Devnagri, even when in practice it was the same language. The main divide between the both languages happened when the Mughals decided to keep Urdu as their court language and removed Persian, which angered many scholars and poets, so they started using more and more Persian and Arabic words instead, causing the two languages to differ a little, mainly in words used in higher classes.

Im a patriot, with another nations flag up is wild...

Cool video, but you forgot to mention forgot mention two dialects of Bengali which couldn't be any further from the original language - the Chittagong and sylhet dialect. Bengali is spoken in Bangladesh and parts of India. But these two dialects are spoken in the Chittagong and Sylhet regions of Bangladesh. if you make another video on this topic in the future, make sure to include these two dialects.

As a white hispanic 👩🏽 🤣

A lot of Bosnians settled in my home town, they all said it was just one language.

If you ever make a part 2 of this, you should consider including Malay (Bahasa Melayu) and Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia). These two languages are so similar that a Malaysian and an Indonesian could effortlessly have a full conversation without any proper education of the other's language. It's like the linguistic equivalent of Hindi and Urdu-historically a single language, but split into two later on. The split happened in 1928 during the Second Youth Congress (Kongres Pemuda II), when Indonesian nationalists decided to adopt a standardized form of Malay (specifically the Johor-Riau dialect) and renamed it to "Bahasa Indonesia" to forge a distinct national identity for the new nation. Even though the two languages have grown apart a bit, especially in vocabulary due to the influence from local languages in Indonesia (e.g. Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese), they're still practically identical. I was born in Malaysia and never formally learned Indonesian, yet I can still understand nearly every single word they say. To us Malaysians, Indonesian often sounds like the formal standard Malay we're taught at school, just a little bit more 'unique' sounding, especially by how they pronounce some words.

Saw a post on Instagram calling Chinese a language. Tried telling them basically the same thing that they're talking about Mandarin and there are other Chineae dialects and i got absolutely massacred even by Chinese people lol. Guess they all had a heart attack and took it personally when a Westerner teaches them a fact about their own language 😂